[Plato] was the first to envisage the idea of timeless existence and to emphasize it-against reason-as a reality, more [real] than our actual experience.

[Plato] was the first to envisage the idea of timeless existence and to emphasize it-against reason-as a reality, more [real] than our actual experience.

In this communication I wish first to show in the simplest case of the hydrogen atom (nonrelativistic and undistorted) that the usual rates for quantization can be replaced by another requirement, in which mention of "whole numbers" no longer occurs. Instead the integers occur in the same natural way as the integers specifying the number of nodes in a vibrating string. The new conception can be generalized, and I believe it touches the deepest meaning of the quantum rules.

If we are going t stick to this damned quantum-jumping, then I regret that I ever had anything to do with quantum theory.

Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question. Science has no answer to it.

It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, "Who are we?"

The verbal interpretation, on the other hand, i.e. the metaphysics of quantum physics, is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model.